Appearances are deceiving

1914 photo

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked,
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

‘‘Richard Cory,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935). He grew up in Gardiner, Maine, whence came the themes of many of his poems.

‘Joy shivers in the corner’

“Aunt Karen in the Rocking Chair,’’ by Edvard Munch, 1883

Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast
Of love that you will hear them at a feast
Where demons would appeal for some repose,
Still clamoring where the chalice overflows
And crying wildest who have drunk the least.

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

‘‘New England,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), famed poet who grew up on the Maine Coast

Old High School (1870-1969) in Gardiner, Maine, which Robinson attended.

‘A charmed antiquity’

“View of Boston,’’ by J. J. Hawes, c. 1860s–1880s

My northern pines are good enough for me,
But there’s a town my memory uprears—
A town that always like a friend appears,
And always in the sunrise by the sea.
And over it, somehow, there seems to be
A downward flash of something new and fierce,
That ever strives to clear, but never clears
The dimness of a charmed antiquity.

— “Boston,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

Secret anguish

Gardiner, Maine’s long-gone R. P. Hazzard Co. shoe factory in 1915

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

— “Richard Cory,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), who set many of his poems in the fictional community of Tilbury Town, modeled after Gardiner, Maine, where Robinson grew up.

In sleepy downtown Gardiner now

'Joy shivers in a corner'

“Northeaster,’’ by Winslow Homer (1836-1910). Much of his work was inspired by the New England coast.

Here where the wind is always north-north-east

And children learn to walk on frozen toes,

Wonder begets an envy of all those

Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast

Of love that you will hear them at a feast

Where demons would appeal for some repose,

Still clamoring where the chalice overflows

And crying wildest who have drunk the least.

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,

We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;

Joy shivers in the corner where she knits

And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,

Cheerful as when she tortured into fits

The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

“New England,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935). The famed poet grew up on the Maine Coast.

‘Like a stairway to the sea’

New Harbor, Bristol, Maine, about 1905.

She fears him, and will always ask
      What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
      All reasons to refuse him;
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
      Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity
      That once had power to sound him,
And Love, that will not let him be
      The Judas that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost,
As if it were alone the cost –
He sees that he will not be lost
      And waits and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees
      Envelops and allures him;
Tradition, touching all he sees,
      Beguiles and reassures him;
And all her doubts of what he says
Are dimmed with what she knows of days –
Till even prejudice delays
      And fades, and she secures him.

The failing leaf inaugurates
      The reign of her confusion:
The pounding wave reverberates
      The dirge of her illusion;
And home, where passion lived and died,
Becomes a place where she can hide,
While all the town and harbour side
      Vibrate with her seclusion. 

We tell you, tapping on our brows,
      The story as it should be –
As if the story of a house
      Were told, or ever could be;
We'll have no kindly veil between
Her visions and those we have seen –
As if we guessed what hers had been,
      Or what they are, or would be.

Meanwhile we do no harm; for they
      That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
      Take what the god has given;
Though like waves breaking it may be
Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea
      Where down the blind are driven.

— “Eros Turannos, by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), born in Head Tide, Maine.

Robinson’s boyhood home, in Gardiner, Maine.

'Familiar as an old mistake'

"The Worship of Mammon,'' by Evelyn de Morgan.

"Time was when his half million drew

    The breath of six per cent;

But soon the worm of what-was-not

    Fed hard on his content;

And something crumbled in his brain

    When his half million went.

Time passed, and filled along with his

    The place of many more;

Time came, and hardly one of us

    Had credence to restore,

From what appeared one day, the man

    Whom we had known before.

The broken voice, the withered neck,

    The coat worn out with care,

The cleanliness of indigence,

    The brilliance of despair,

The fond imponderable dreams

    Of affluence —all were there.

Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes,

    Fares hard now in the race,

With heart and eye that have a task

    When he looks in the face

Of one who might so easily

    Have been in Finzer's place.

He comes unfailing for the loan

    We give and then forget;

He comes, and probably for years

    Will he be coming yet —

Familiar as an old mistake,

    And futile as regret.''

-- "Bewick Finzer,'' by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), Maine's most famous poet and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

'Welcome home!'

Downtown Gardiner, Maine, in 1914. Edwin Arlington Robinson spent his early years in the town, which may have been a model for "Tilbury Town.''

"Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night 

Over the hill between the town below 

And the forsaken upland hermitage 

That held as much as he should ever know 

On earth again of home, paused warily. 

The road was his with not a native near; 

And Eben, having leisure, said aloud, 

For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear: 

'Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon 

Again, and we may not have many more; 

The bird is on the wing, the poet says, 

And you and I have said it here before. 

Drink to the bird.' He raised up to the light 

The jug that he had gone so far to fill, 

And answered huskily: 'Well, Mr. Flood, 

Since you propose it, I believe I will.'

Alone, as if enduring to the end 

A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn, 

He stood there in the middle of the road 

Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn. 

Below him, in the town among the trees, 

Where friends of other days had honored him, 

A phantom salutation of the dead 

Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim. 

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child 

Down tenderly, fearing it may awake, 

He set the jug down slowly at his feet 

With trembling care, knowing that most things break; 

And only when assured that on firm earth 

It stood, as the uncertain lives of men 

Assuredly did not, he paced away, 

And with his hand extended paused again: 

'Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this 

In a long time; and many a change has come 

To both of us, I fear, since last it was 

We had a drop together. Welcome home!' 

Convivially returning with himself, 

Again he raised the jug up to the light; 

And with an acquiescent quaver said: 

'Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might. 

'Only a very little, Mr. Flood— 

For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.'

So, for the time, apparently it did, 

And Eben evidently thought so too; 

For soon amid the silver loneliness 

Of night he lifted up his voice and sang, 

Secure, with only two moons listening, 

Until the whole harmonious landscape rang— 

'For auld lang syne.' The weary throat gave out, 

The last word wavered; and the song being done, 

He raised again the jug regretfully 

And shook his head, and was again alone. 

There was not much that was ahead of him, 

And there was nothing in the town below— 

Where strangers would have shut the many doors 

That many friends had opened long ago.''

-- "Mr. Flood's Party,'' by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

'Like beauty from a face'

"The stillness of October gold
Went out like beauty from a face."

-- Edwin Arlington Robinson